The Art of Preserving Love

her own bed, but hers was a wooden bed in a tiny room at the back of the house, whereas Edie had a brass bed in the front room with bay windows and velvet curtains. The Cottinghams provided her with everything she needed so she didn’t need the wage they paid her of a sovereign each week. She always changed the coin into two half sovereigns when she did the grocery shopping and took one half to Dottie and stashed the other half in a washed golden syrup tin, and when she counted how many sovereigns she had at the end of each month she always had to wash her hands afterwards because the coins were sticky. But all in all Nurse Drake had been right. Mister Cottingham never tried to flutter his hands over her as though he was grasping for gold dust, and Missus Cottingham was kind and quiet and like the mother she never had. Edie gave her all her old dresses and sometimes it was almost like they were sisters. The risk had paid off.

Edie stood in the hallway, gave a little nervous laugh at absolutely nothing, and fidgeted with her hat. Then she saw her mother frowning at the bottom of her skirt.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Mama,’ Edie leaned forward and whispered, ‘I haven’t killed a Chinaman.’

She watched her mother’s face closely. She was expecting a lecture but Lucy only sighed and leant back against the wall. A shiver ran down Edie’s spine, a sense of foreboding. Nothing was happening as it normally would. Her mother should have said something to alert her father, she should have said, ‘Father, see what our Edith has done to her Sunday best,’ not just sighed as though her mind was elsewhere altogether, concentrating on things more important than Edie. And her father should have noticed and demanded she go and change. Edie had always been the focus of their attention. But suddenly it seemed that her mother and father weren’t interested in her any more and she felt immensely put out. She looked at her father again, demanding his attention with her gaze, but he was still tapping away at his watch as though enough taps would give him control of time. His brow was furrowed and his thoughts were far away.

Edie sulked; she didn’t care now what they said about her skirt. They could say what they jolly well liked if they were going to treat her like a piece of glass. She looked from one to the other and what was really only a minute or two seemed to stretch into the future. But her father stayed focused on his watch and her mother’s eyes gave nothing away.

‘What are you hiding under that cape, Mama?’ Edie fingered the fur trim and wondered why her mother insisted on wearing it when the morning had become quite warm. It was past ten and they would be back from church well before the afternoon chill set in at four. Lucy didn’t answer; she just looked at Edie with watery eyes. Edie failed to see how drawn and pale her mother was, as if talcum powder had been smeared over her cheeks.

Edie turned her attention to Beth and said, ‘Lovely skirt, Beth,’ even though it was the same skirt Beth wore every Sunday.

‘You’d be a hit at the Bunch of Grapes in your skirt,’ said Beth, thinking of the miners who her sisters said could be filled up with beer but could never get enough loving to sate their appetites.

‘Really?’ asked Edie.

‘Oh yes,’ said Beth, thinking of the miners.

‘Righteo,’ said Paul. He had given up tapping his watch and instead swung his black umbrella, which doubled as a walking stick, in a figure eight and tapped it on the ground three times. Then he went back to his watch, like a boy that couldn’t leave something alone for one minute. ‘Righteo then, we better be off,’ he said finally. And without looking back he led the way out the front door that was framed by the reds and greens of the flying rosellas in the leadlight windows.

The windows cast rainbow beams that bounced off the walls, lighting the entranceway like children’s wishes. When Edie was a child she had sometimes sat in the coloured beams, letting their magic play over her skin, and as she sat there she would ask God for the things that she wanted. God had always seemed to answer. So as she passed under the beams this morning she quickly asked for a husband and if God was in a good mood could he make it Theo Hooley.

Paul was already walking smartly down the verandah steps and the timber boards bounced under the weight of his determined footsteps and the tapping of the umbrella. The three women scurried to keep up with him. He stepped out onto the driveway and the gravel crunched under his shoes.

The women followed.

‘Men!’ Edie said to Lucy as they walked down the steps after him. He hadn’t even looked at her skirt once. How could he not even notice her hours of hard work?

‘Which man?’ asked Lucy absently, putting her arm through Edie’s and giving a little squeeze.

‘Father of course — look.’ And Edie stuck out one stockinged foot showing the new length of her skirt, as though her mother hadn’t already seen it. Her ankle poked out, sitting right between her boot and the new bottom of her skirt, clothed only in a black woollen stocking.

‘But what about a dust ruffle? Beth will be constantly washing it.’ Lucy was a practical woman.

‘Me and whose army,’ muttered Beth.

‘I don’t need a dust ruffle now that it can’t drag on the ground,’ Edie pointed out.

Her mother raised an eyebrow.

‘Fashions change,’ said Edie.

‘Not if your father has his way,’ said Lucy and they looked ahead to where he strode in front of them, leading the women of his family down Webster Street to Drummond Street and on towards